The genealogy of fictional characters can become an obsession, like train-spotting, and should be firmly resisted.

Some fictions become fixtures in the real city. Their stories are so powerful that they leap off the page on to the streets, irreversibly altering the place where they were set.

I feel like these characters, these places, these beings and plots, and even these inanimate objects are counting on me for survival. It’s my responsibility to reveal them to the world, to show my readers the names of these things, to show them their histories and stories.

I write fiction not for my readers and not for myself. I write fiction for the sake of those odd heroic characters that are contained therein. They are counting on me as much as I am counting on them.

Political pundits in Delhi and Islamabad have berated the West for its relativism and double-standards. After all why should Britain have a nuclear arsenal but not India? It is a reasonable question.

Those who really value Ukrainian sovereignty should opt for real independence and a positive neutrality: neither a plaything of the West nor Moscow.